


Just A Thought

by risokura



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Eating Disorders, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:06:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3991051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risokura/pseuds/risokura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you know why I drink on an empty stomach? It's easier to puke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Thought

**Author's Note:**

> This is as relevant a piece as you wish it to be.
> 
> Written primarily to Lies by CHVRCHES.

I got drunk for the first time when I was seventeen.

It was at a Halloween party and the school slut—one of three in our grade—had slipped me an invitation during an obnoxiously boring anatomy lecture. Her thick acrylic nails pressed tightly into the black envelope as she slid it across my desk and the corner of the paper dug into my skin through the gaps in my sweater. I was doodling in the sides of my looseleaf as I always did, ignoring the incessant prattling of my teacher while I spilled a battlefield of ink across my chemically treated pristine and white paper. She smiled at me and I glanced down at the envelope that was currently sticking out from beneath my arm. Black, loud, obvious.

On Halloween night she presses a flask into my hands. There’s whiskey in its silver tin and it smells awful, but I drink it anyway. Roxas is sitting at my side, unenthused as he always is and looking like he wants to kill himself. Demyx disappeared down into the basement with some girl, I don’t know. I’ve lost track. I heard from somewhere that drinking on an empty stomach gets you drunker faster.

Somehow we’re outside on the slut’s porch and I’m sitting with my head in-between my knees. The world is spinning and I feel this heaviness building in my stomach. It hurts and I don’t like when my body feels like this. Feels full, feels tangible. I want to puke but I never can. Roxas crosses his arms over his chest, shifts his weight to his other heel and asks me if I’ve eaten today. _No_.

You see when I was younger I was the fattest kid in my kindergarten class. How sick is it that a five year old child is conscious of these things? That they _know_ that they weigh the most in a group of twenty five kids. What happened to being fixated on things like eating glue? Running your favorite crayon down so far that you can no longer peel the paper from its waxy body without getting shavings stuck underneath your grimy fingers?

My mother always said I had a healthy appetite. That’s what all mother’s tell you as they pinch your cheek and stuff you full of milk and waffles in the morning. Your stomach sloshes with the bits of partially digested food as she grabs your hand and leads you down the road to your school. You’re _healthy_. You still have your baby fat. You’re just chubby. It’s not fat, it’s just chub. You’ll lose it eventually.

When I meet Roxas I’m enamored with how small and thin he is. I’m still the fattest kid in my class and he’s the smallest thing on the playground. Somehow we connect. Two elementary school outcasts—(that might be extreme for a pair of first graders, but whatever)—that’s what we were. He transfers into my class the next year, as well as Demyx. Tall, lanky Demyx. He pokes me in the stomach and laughs, immature and stupid.

I spend the summer sneaking my mother’s aerobic tapes from out of the living room and play them while she goes off to the supermarket to buy groceries. Meats and vegetables and pastas and bread. Carbs, fats, proteins, sugars. I stand before the mirror in a bathing suit and notice the bulge in my stomach. I don’t lose weight and I think I’m even fatter by the time I return to school.

My brother is older by five years and he’s always been tall and lean. They would tell me I’d even out like him. It was in our genetics. Everyone was always tall and _thin_ when they were younger. He plays sports and binges on disgusting food. Chocolate syrup and peanut butter drizzled onto crackers. Celery and ketchup, popcorn and ice cream. Chocolate milkshakes that spill out from the sides of his greedy mouth as we gorge ourselves on McDonald’s in the backseat of my father’s bright green Cadillac. I fucking hate that car.

Oddly enough, for being the fattest kid in my class, I’ve never really been teased for it. Maybe it’s because everyone genuinely likes me? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never questioned it. Yet, as a child, the doctor tells my mother to watch my weight. I’m taller than most, I’m heavier than most. I should be eating more vegetables, less sweets. I spoon the squash my mother makes into a napkin and chomp down into the pork that have been marinating in the stove for the last two hours. Juice dribbles down my chin and my mother smiles. My _healthy boy.  
_

At the age of eleven, I’m starting to wonder about the opposite sex… or maybe it’s the same sex. I can’t really tell and I’m too young to really care. I’m still preoccupied with how fat I am. I pinch at my skin and push the rolls of fat on my stomach together. It dimples and puckers, I want to cut myself apart. Pull the pieces of flesh peppered with this disgusting, yellowing fat. Strip it away and sew myself back together. A newer, thinner me.

My mother takes me into the doctor for a checkup and I clock in at thirty pounds overweight. They draw blood, tell me I’m prediabetic. For the next six months it’s nothing but chicken salad sandwiches, water and apples. Roxas and Demyx both notice. Say that my face looks less bloated, that I look _happier._ I can see my hipbones for the first time. I go back to the doctor. Everything is normal.

Two years pass and I gain the weight back. But, I’m taller now and things even out. The weight gain isn’t _as_ noticeable, but I know it’s there. As long as I know it’s there, I can’t be normal. Roxas says I’m going crazy and to _shut up_ about stupid shit. He’s currently found some girl in our art class to occupy his time with and I’m left with Demyx and his stupidity. In eighth grade I meet Xion, Roxas and I fall out of touch with one another. I ask her to be my girlfriend because it’s easier this way. Liking her makes things _easier_. She’s volatile, almost as fucked up as I am, and I guess that’s what makes us work. My problems always seem superficial in comparison to her. At lunch time I am always ravenous and wish that my stomach would just _shut up_. I don’t want to eat, but I can’t stop.

I break up with Xion and find myself in high school. By now Demyx and I practically tower over Roxas. I’ve gained those thirty pounds back and I can’t see my hip bones anymore. I feel them, my collar bones, my ribs. All the desirable parts of me are buried beneath fat and flesh. Because I’m out of control, I have zero control. At lunch I shovel burgers and fries down my throat almost daily. Bacon, egg and cheese in the morning, pizza and soda for dinner at night. My stomach hurts and I don’t care about what I’m doing wrong. I overhear this girl tell her friend that she gave up soda for religious reasons. I eat something wrong one morning and blow chunks on the wall in the hallway leading to my bedroom. I resolve to do the same.

As sophomore year begins, I cannot stand to look at fat people. Some years later I will understand that it is an extension of the hatred I feel for my own body. Rolls, dimples, sloth. Why can’t they take better care of themselves? What can I do to feel above them? I’ve stopped eating meat and declare that I am a vegetarian. I skip lunch, spend my days in the library with my stomach gurgling and spewing insults my way.

 _165lbs._ 140lbs. If I arch my back and inhale, I can see my ribs.

Roxas tells me my eyes are pretty underneath the blankets of my bed and straddles my hips as he leans into kiss me. All I can think is that he can feel _everything_. Feel how fat my thighs are, how I’ve lost the razor sharp edge in my hips. How everything is fat. Fat, fat, fat, fat. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t _touch_ me.

The weight all comes back within a year and I’m tired of feeling tired. You starve and you stumble. Sway back and forth as your friends ask you how you got so thin. You smile because you’re so sick and you’re about to pass out. _Come over_. No, there’s food involved. If I eat, I’m going to gain. And I won’t stop gaining until I bow over in a bloated and bloody mess. I can’t be seen eating. If they see me eating, they know I’ve lost control. I’m supposed to be superior. _Better._

I stop eating; hope that I burn enough calories so that I will _stop_ being fucking fat for once in my fucking life. Girls comment that they wish they had my waist. _You’re so slim, Axel. So thin, so thin, so thin._ My resolve breaks because my fucking stomach won’t stop gnawing at my insides. I stuff my face with anything in the house and fucking collapse on the floor of the kitchen, hyperventilating because I fucked it up. Again. I gave in. _Again_. So fat, so fat, _so fat_.

I tell Roxas what’s going on. He looks at me in disbelief. His pretty little face turns up in anger. Of course he’s _mad_ at me. He’s always mad at me for doing stupid shit. But this takes the cake. He turns into a fucking anorexic bodyguard and won’t stop following me around. He analyzes all my food choices—(what I never eat)—and I close up to him. I was afraid of this. He doesn’t understand. _You’re not fat._ He’s lying. He doesn’t see it.

Senior year, I’m a basket case. My mother hates my father, my father hates my mother, hates me, hates my brother, hates my father, my mother hates me. I land myself in therapy and never bring up my issues with food. The conversation revolves around anxiety and my inability to quell the heaviness in my heart. I didn’t imagine myself here when I was seventeen, not like this. I tell Roxas I’m seeing a therapist and he stops his policing. If only for a little while.

My parents have an argument that results in me calling the cops on my father and my mother crying all night in the bathroom. I call my brother at one in the morning so he can come and take me away. Reno shows up with Rude and they take me to some random chicks house where I’m trying to puke in her basement. I stand there, squatting with my hands on my thighs as I lean over the toilet. What the hell was my brother thinking when he brought me here? I try to puke, but nothing comes. I’m too stupid to stick my fingers down my throat. Too stupid, too drunk.

I open the door to the bathroom and my brother is standing there with a blunt in his hand. _Do you want a hit?_ I know pot makes you hungry. He drives me home after I decline.

Summer is agony and I spend it fighting with Roxas. We should have had _sex_ by now. Everyone our age is having sex. Why aren’t we? He knows the fucking answer to that question and I break up with him. He goes off to college while I stay in our hometown for the next year. Wandering and wondering. I smoke cigarettes and try to find meaning in bottomless cups of coffee. I forget about this quest to lose weight as I lose myself in other ventures. Eventually the boredom consumes me and I plunk myself down in an artificially heated room with a balding, middle aged man at its helm. 

Roxas comes back and things between us are normal. I’m out of therapy, trying to accept my body for what it is and isn’t. Trying to understand who I am out of this craziness. But then old memories start to surface and I want to throw up. But, I can’t. I can _never_ throw up no matter how many times I stick my fingers down my throat and will my stomach to finally _give_. Give me what I want. Give me the satisfaction of knowing that _I_ control this mess of a human being.

I lose weight again. My parents divorce is volatile and the stress has finally caught up to me. My mother says to me that I look _anorexic._ For the first time she’s finally noticed and a sick part of me smiles with satisfaction. This is disgusting, what I’m doing to myself. Cigarettes and coffee. Smoke and drink until my insides are as black and dead as my mind. I'm not hungry am I?

At twenty one I slam the stall door behind me, too drunk for words and rest my weary head on the peeling plaster behind me. I left Roxas at the bar, told him I would be two minutes. I stick my finger down my throat and finally it happens. A rainbow of colors spill from my mouth, splatter white porcelain and I almost choke because I’m so giddy with glee. I feel like laughing because this is sick. I’ve finally discovered how to fucking purge and all I can do is laugh and stumble drunkenly around in the bathroom. I have double vision and I want to do it again. Feel the lurch and pull of my stomach as I stick my finger down my throat and hope I can puke again.

I start to drink on an empty stomach. Friends ask me to go out to dinner and I don’t eat for the entire day because I know alcohol is going to be involved. Drink, drink, drink. Don’t eat, pick at your food. Everyone’s always more concerned about your glass being full than they are about you finishing the food on your plate.

I keep doing it. Keep getting fucking trashed and drink empty calories because I know that by the end of the night, they’ll end up in the fucking toilet where they belong, where all this fucking food has always belonged. On one night out, we get Korean BBQ. Demyx laughs from behind his frothy beer and tells me that I’m so fucked up. I stumble from the table, a grin on my face. Yes, I am. I’m _very_ fucked up.

New Years, I drink alone. I shovel food into my mouth after I drink half a bottle of alcohol. Fingers pressed deep, saliva dripping down my wrist, food rising back up my throat. Upchuck, upchuck, upchuck. I want to throw up until there's blood. I want to see physical proof of my existence. I want to kill what's inside of me. So, I want to see my guts, I want to know that I'm _real_. This isn't a dream. This stupid shit isn't a fucking nightmare that I live through every single day of my life.

On a trip out to the seaside, I don’t eat. I’ll get something when we get there, a lie I tell to assuage Roxas’ worry. At night we play Kings in our hotel room and sip rum straight from the bottle. I’m getting to the point where giddiness turn to sickness and I get up to go to the bathroom. Roxas has _finally_ caught on.

_Don’t you stick your finger down your throat to throw up._

I pause and turn to him, too drunk to even stand straight as I leave the door wide open and push up the seat to the toilet. What is he going to do? Bind my wrists? I laugh and turn around, proceed to stick my finger down my throat and dry heave.

 _Fucking stop it, Axel_.

I don’t remember what happens or how many times I puke, but next thing I know I’m in my bed with a water bottle by my head and Roxas sitting with his back to me. Demyx is missing and my head is going to split in two. Roxas doesn’t say anything as he leaves the room and leaves me alone in silence.

After awhile… I stop drinking to puke. I hate the rawness it leaves in my throat, the pounding I feel in my head. This isn’t helping, it’s never helped. I’m tired of being young and fucked up. Two years pass and I’m twenty three. All I can think about is how fat I am, even though I’ve stopped the behaviors. I still drink coffee like a bad crutch. I’ve considered going back to therapy, but I can’t. I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m supposed to be fixed. I’m supposed to be a functioning member of society. I’m supposed to be _normal._ I thought this was normal.

Friends pressure me to drink more, but I know that I shouldn't. There was a reason I always got so trashed and I don't feel like explaining it to people. Because it's vile and it's disgusting. The last time I puked I didn't even mean to throw up. Roxas came after me into the bathroom, asking if I was all right. That was the one  and _only_ time I didn't have to stick my fucking fingers down my throat to puke.

Have you ever woken up so dizzy that you nearly collapse on your way out of bed? The only reason you eat is because you wish the world would stop spinning. You wish you could kill yourself and the world would just _stop_. I lie alone at night and finger my bones as I stare off into the abyss. I pull my skin up tight, imagining what it would be like if my stomach were flat. I’m sick of this melancholy that laces itself so tightly into my skin, loops itself around my heart and squeezes tight until everything stops. I’m tired of inadequacy, I’m tired of hurting, I’m tired of _weight_. I count my ribs and try to go to sleep.

A couple of years later I go on the computer and find that girl from before. You know, the slut from the Halloween party? She’s lost weight. A ton of it. Part of me wonders how she did it, while another envies her from afar.

Again, I remember the taste of whiskey in my mouth.

My knuckles are bruised.


End file.
